ORS: Set in a neo-Seoul, future heist/smuggler cyberdude, Julius Dax, is hired to steal some code, which turns out to be more than he bargained for. It’s told across three perspectives.
I love cyberpunk, and therefore am inclined to give even somewhat subpar cyberpunk, like Shadowrun novelisations, a look. Sad to say, Repo Virtual falls somewhere on the less great side of cyberpunk. It felt like the author, Corey White, decided to do a cyberpunk-by-numbers: near-future oriental (check,) words like biomass strewn about (check,) outsider vibe (check check check,) Interesting socioeconomic commentary about anything? (uhhhhh.) cool characters? (hmmmmm.) Neat set pieces? (nope.) Cool tonal vibe at least? (ack.) And not for a lack of trying to jam in as many right now trends as possible–gender fluidity, yes, non-binary love, yes, but as much as I appreciate that it’s woven in, it doesn’t a good work work. Rather, Repo Virtual feels like a bad novelisation of the plot of a videogame. And spoiler alert———-when the AI starts getting sentient, the writing gets a bit cringey in its “awakening / awe” portrayal. I have to believe the author really enjoys cyberpunk. But what makes great cyberpunk, at least for me, is a sense of the whole and a message. Whether you’re talking about Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, or–taking a slight expansion of the term– Annalee Newitz, there is a density and a burst of creativity and joy. It’s not there here. There’s potential with the city, the set-up should be so much fun (who doesn’t love a heist!,) but the characters and plot let it down.
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If On a Winter's Night, a Traveler... 